Ya Es Hora (It’s Time!) is a campaign to empower Latinos to participate fully in the US political process through naturalization, census form completion, and voting. The campaign provides non-partisan information to voters in the hopes of overcoming the two biggest barriers to Latino ballot participation: lack of engagement and lack of access. Some Latino voters of the GOP persuasion would like to walk back Latino progress. The group Latinos for Reform is running ads in Nevada urging Latinos to abstain from voting in this midterm election. The stated rationale of the ads goes something like this:
Democrats haven’t pushed through immigration reform yet. Therefore they don’t deserve your vote. Therefore don’t vote.
The ads pointedly do not mention the abysmal GOP candidates from the state of Arizona this year, nor do they raise the issue of Republican obstruction of any meaningful reform.
The group almost certainly knows that GOP success at the ballot box this year is inversely proportional to voter participation. Conservatives are touting low voter turnout among Democratic voters as the means to the win this year. The leadership of Latinos for Reform are smart enough to know they can’t openly endorse Republican candidates with extreme anti-immigration positions, like Sharron Angle. However, encouraging Latino voters to stay home increases Angle’s chances of victory, and this cynical group knows it.
Thankfully, Univision has decided not to run the ads in the wake of public outrage after it was announced that the network would air them for $80,000. At least one player in this distasteful drama that the American political process has become has a conscience, it seems.
Abdicating the right to vote is never the answer to oppression in a democracy.
(Full story at ThinkProgress).
Chicanery: Paid for by the GOP
My spouse, also a registered Democrat, received not one, but two, fliers from the GOP today. Both mailers urged him to vote early, and helpfully provided voting locations in Sherwood, Jacksonville, Maumelle, and the farthest reaches of Little Rock. (Our zip code, as you can see, is 72227. ) Sure, he can vote in Jacksonville or Maumelle, but it would be one hell of an inconvenience to do so, when there are several polling places closer to home. One might call this misdirection an oversight. I call it chicanery. It looks, for all the world, like an attempt to discourage him from getting out to vote early.
While this type of deception is not outright fraud (after all, if he makes it to Jacksonville they will let him vote), it is certainly unethical. Where is Jimmy Carter? He doesn’t have to go to developing nations to find voting irregularities anymore. We have a political party right here in this country that will not hesitate to mislead voters to achieve its goals. That such a party can exist and get candidates elected to high office makes a mockery of our electoral process. It’s time for the rank and file of the GOP to stand up and demand accountability from their leadership.
For the rest of us, it’s time to repudiate this party! Vote early, vote Democratic.
(Don’t trust propaganda. Find your early voting locations at your County Clerk’s office or look-up statewide polling locations by county here.)
HR 1874 is a bill unlikely to see the light of day anywhere but Progressive media. When I first read the title, I immediately bristled. The word “Patriot” is not a favorite of mine lately thanks to the Patriot Act and TeaParty Patriots, among other things. Use of the P word may actually help slip this bill under the radar of those very T.P Patriots and those like them. This bill is Progressive, and is extremely relevant to yesterday’s discussion of income inequality. The summary:
4/2/2009–Introduced. Patriot Corporations of America Act of 2009 – Grants after 2009 a preference to Patriot corporations in the evaluation of bids or proposals for federal contracts. Defines ” Patriot corporation” as a corporation which:
(1) produces at least 90% of its goods and services in the United States;
(2) does not pay its its management-level employees at a rate more than 10,000% of the compensation of its lowest paid employee;
(3) conducts at least 50% of its research and development in the United States;
(4) contributes at least 5% of its payroll to a portable pension fund for its employees;
(5) pays at least 70% of its employees’ health insurance costs;
(6) maintains a policy of neutrality in employee organizing drives;
(7) provides full differential salary and insurance benefits for all National Guard and Reserve employees who are called to active duty; and
(8) has not violated federal regulations, including regulations relating to the environment, workplace safety, labor relations, and consumer protections. Amends the Internal Revenue Code to:
(1) reduce the income tax rate for Patriot corporations;
(2) reclassify foreign corporations created or organized to avoid federal taxation as domestic corporations for income tax purposes; and
I’m for it. Let’s give tax breaks to companies that make things in the US and take away the tax breaks for companies created offshore as tax shelters. Along the way, let’s create an incentive for a company to be pro-labor, environmentally responsible, and distribute income more evenly. Too bad this will never make it to the House floor, let alone the Senate.
Comcast plans to expand its empire. Another megacorporation is going to get more mega.
I may be the only person in this country who still believes we have anti-trust laws on the books. Is anyone looking out for the consumer? For the “free trade” and competition we have been hearing so much about lately?
Then again, maybe, just maybe, I’m not the only one. According to Bloomberg, the Obama administration is eyeing the proposed merger with skepticism. America’s best and brightest put their heads together on this one and concluded that consolidation of America’s already massive communications companies may “thwart competition.” Score one for rational thought.
Multinationals, including (but certainly not limited to) Wal-Mart, like to take their jobs to China to take advantage of cheap labor and more relaxed labor laws. The low, low prices consumers in the US pay for almost everything these days are subsidized by the sweat of those Chinese workers. Because all of this is happening on the other side of the planet, it’s easy for all of us, consumers and retailers alike, to pretend that our lavish lifestyles are achieved without significant human rights violations. It’s easy to think that our wasteful consumption actually provides good jobs for workers in developing nations.
We are kidding ourselves. China Labor Watch is a non-governmental organization whose mission is to make the lives of China’s workers better by calling attention to violations of labor laws and unethical behavior by multinationals. They recently produced a report detailing violations of local labor laws by Wal-Mart producers in China. Although Wal-Mart claims to be getting tough on this type of unethical behavior, CLW believes the company is not doing enough to solve the problems.
Think before you buy. Ultimately, consumers here in the Wasteful West drive the behaviors of retailers, even the world’s wealthiest. Vote with your wallet.
It didn’t get much press in September, when the White House blog announced the change, but President Obama is moving forward with his campaign promise to close the “revolving door” in Washington. The administration no longer wants federally registered lobbyists appointed to advisory panels. These are appointments that the President does not make; they are made by federal agencies. Full story at HuffingtonPost.
I’m not naive enough to think this will clean up Washington, but the reaction from lobbyists and their professional organizations indicates this is definitely a step in the right direction (if it makes lobbyists this angry, it must be right). Especially indignant are the Industry Trade Avisory Committee members. These groups provide “advice and technical assistance” to the Commerce Department and the US Trade Representative. Committee chairs, including CEOs of several major corporations) wrote Obama a nastygram.
“This action will severely undermine the utility of the advisory committee process,” they wrote. Happily, I agree. The action will indeed undermine the utility of the process to protect the interests of business over those of the greater public good.
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